Commentary on Fichte's “The Illegality of the Unauthorised ... - uoltj

(2008) 5:1&2 UOLTJ 141
<strong>Commentary</strong> on Fichte 165
“I” and the “not-I” must be achieved at every moment, rather than achieved
statically as a determinate relation between the “I” and the “not-I.” For this
reason, Fichte says that the “opposites are to be conjoined in the concept of
mere determinability (not that of determination).” 102 Given the dynamic process
in which the imagination is constantly involved, it is clear that the form given to
an expression, insofar as it is the expression of a representation in an individual’s
consciousness, is the unique product of the infinitely variable process of synthesis
within that individual’s consciousness. This process is not determined by a
determinate rule, but rather it is being continuously determined through the
ongoing synthesis undertaken by our power of imagination.
Thus for Fichte, every perception of an object is undertaken by a free
being, and so it bears “within itself some imprint of this free being,” for only in
this way “can what is real become an object for a free being.” 103 Insofar as my
thoughts contain both an ideal element (the constitutive power of my imagination)
and a real element (the resistance of what is not-I), they are always unique to me,
because they bear the imprint of the self’s freedom on them.
Fichte’s epistemological claim supports his legal claim that the unique
personality of others is to be respected. The epistemology provides a justification
for why the thoughts of each individual are separate from those of others, and
hence unique to them. At a general level, we have seen that the uniqueness of
the individual’s thoughts, viz. the uniqueness of the form the individual gives
to them, derives from the relationship between thought and our facticity, i.e.
the social and historical aspects of our existence. At a deeper level, Fichte’s
epistemology explains how every thought necessarily bears within it the mark of
the self’s activity. This activity is that of the imagination, which unites the manifold
of perceptions into an object on the basis of the sequence and spatial positioning
of the subject. Every thought thus bears the mark of the unique standpoint of the
individual, since in constructing the objects which we perceive, the imagination’s
infinite power to create is limited by the data received from the unique location
of the subject in space and time. The subject is limited by the object, but this
limitation is itself generated out of the self through its activity. Thus unlike Kant,
who posited things in themselves that exist independently of the self, for Fichte,
the limit on the self is the result of the spontaneous activity of the self, and thus
every thought and perception is marked by the acts of the self.
9.3. Fichte’s Intersubjective Conception of Property Guarantees
Property For All, Including Authors
The final issue foreshadowed in Fichte’s article on the reprinting of books is the
intersubjectivity of right, which grounds the legal conception of property. The
importance of mutual recognition as the foundation of right is adumbrated in
“Proof of the Illegality of the Unauthorised Reprinting of Books.” According to
Fichte, the freedom of the author is only realised once another recognizes her
freedom by not interfering with the indicia of her personality present in the form
102. Fichte, Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge, supra note 99 at p. 193.
103. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, “(Wissenschaftslehre) nova method,” (1986/99), in Daniel Breazeale, ed. and trans.,
Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy: (Wissenschaftslehre) Nova Methodo (Cornell University Press,
1992) at p. 438.